Kurt Simon and the Cows

You knew Kurt was special the moment you met him. I had the pleasure of being introduced to Kurt by another unusual couple, Dr. And Mrs. Albert Fields, both recently deceased. Albert invited me to a lecture at a Westside hospital and it turned out that Kurt was the guest speaker.

Kurt spoke about US policy in regard to assisting foreign nations, and among other interesting observations that he gathered first hand, he offered the following:

A poor central American country farmer had one cow and was able to partially supply most of the milk demands of that community. Our government, wishing to assist that growing need provided, at no cost, two additional animals. Since the original farmer had no way to compete with the free milk supplied by the US gift, he butchered his cow and sold her meat.

Eventually the two new cows were no longer able to produce milk, thus totally eliminating all milk production in that area. As it turned out the end result of that gift left that community milkless and worse off than they had been originally. (I think there is a MORAL here somewhere.)